


Flowers, Feathers and Rocks

by Laine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, got exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:35:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laine/pseuds/Laine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He is the Warden of the West, but she is the warden of his heart.</i>
</p>
<p>When the King summons Tywin to court to accept the position of King's Hand, the Warden of the West trusts his wife to guard all that he holds dearest: his castle, his lands, and his unborn child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowers, Feathers and Rocks

She learns of her pregnancy on an early-summer morning. The maester’s tower overlooks the coast of Casterly Rock, and Joanna leans her shoulders out the window casement to breathe the fresh salt air, a giddy smile twitching at her lips. She rubs her palm over her stomach- still flat, but not for long- and it’s a beautiful day and the sun trails lingering kisses over her cheekbones and the feathers and pollen wafting over from the beach settle on the sill in a cluster of white and gold. And she is young and pretty and in love, and the child within her will not inherit a history of disgrace and derision, but a seat of wealth and power and respect.   
  
The water below the window ripples with the tide, more choppy and stormy than usual, but Joanna pays it no mind.   
  
  
  
She shares the news with Tywin that evening, and she scarcely manages to get the words out before he takes her face between his large hands and covers her mouth with his. Joanna sighs with delight when she feels the corners of his lips turn up into a smile, and she combs her fingers through his fine golden hair, still warm from the afternoon’s bright sun. He tastes of nectarines, and she eases her tongue past his lips, unable to get her fill of the sweetness. Tywin’s hands, hard and calloused, hands that have maimed and tortured and killed, are impossibly gentle on her now, palms skating over the flat plane of her stomach before wrapping around her waist and drawing her into his lap. Joanna curls against his chest; she’s quite tiny in comparison to her tall husband, and she feels a sense of security in his arms that might vex her were it not tempered by the strength she feels when she sits at his side as his equal in council.   
  
He cradles her the way she will cradle their child (the way she used to cradle Princess Rhaella during her spells, but she cannot think of that, the guilt in her belly might disturb the baby). And as the sea breeze drifts through their window (a bit cooler now, but no less fragrant), Tywin begins to whisper dreams of the future. He speaks of a golden son, tall and fierce and strong, with the power of his father and the cleverness of his mother.   
  
Joanna nearly laughs when she realizes for the first time all day that she’s been imagining herself with a girl child. But of course, a son and an heir is what Casterly Rock requires, and this gilded lion cub that Tywin describes is who she must pray to deliver.   
  
The wind in the window becomes colder and more forceful; goosepimples rise up on Joanna’s bare arms. She wraps her forearms around her middle and nestles closer to Tywin, a soft smile on her lips as the warmth of his body and the hopefulness of his whispers lull her to sleep.   
  
  
  
As Joanna enters her third moon of child-carrying, Tywin receives a raven summoning him to King’s Landing. The King fails to mention what business he has with the Warden of the West, but Tywin confides to his wife in hushed tones that the Tower of the Hand has been vacant for too long, and he expects an offer to ascend to the position. She feels a lopsided pull in her chest, as if a pile of stones have dropped into one half of her heart, tilting it down toward her ribcage. But Tywin’s eyes glitter, the gold in them more prominent than ever; it’s ambition, the constant need to move, to rise, to push beyond and press forward. She loves to see that fire in him, simmering just beneath the still veneer, but she cannot shake the pleasant image she’d begun to piece together of the two of them living a peaceful life in the West, far from the court, far from the Targaryens, far from Aerys and his envy and his cruel fits of pique, far from Rhaella and her bouts of melancholy and her crestfallen stare ( _How can you leave me, Joanna? You promised I’d never be alone..._ ). Just Tywin and Joanna and their wee one on the pebbled beach, ruling their own little western kingdom, never mind the rest of the country- the Lannisters are powerful enough and wealthy enough and beautiful enough to do without any of them. The words itch at her lips-  _Isn’t this enough, Tywin? Aren’t we enough?_  But it isn’t, and they aren’t, and she cannot, will not fault him for that.   
  
_Father never wanted more, Uncle Tytos never wanted more. But Tywin does, and that’s why we are what we are._   
  
The night before his departure, Tywin hosts a banquet at Casterly Rock, a ceremonial farewell full of pomp and circumstance. The bards play “The Rains of Castamere” again and again; Joanna watches Tywin flinch each time the chords start anew (he never did care for the song half as much as everyone assumes).   
  
She takes her place at her husband’s side, offering the crowd a demure smile when he declares her Warden of the West in his absence. He removes the heavy lion pendant that he wears round his neck and slips it over her head; it’s long enough to hang nearly to her navel. There are other jewels to bestow; a ruby-encrusted signet ring for her right hand, an elaborately-carved golden circlet for her head. And then he kisses her as the Great Hall explodes with applause- but he does not smile against her lips, not yet.   
  
When he comes to her chambers that night, Tywin bears no gifts of gold or jewels or finery. Instead, his hands are filled with lilies, the pristine white blooms that grow at the farthest reaches of the grounds. His clever fingers have twisted them into garlands; he drapes one over her hair, another around her neck, and a third on the tiny bulge just below her abdomen. And Joanna smiles, even as tears sparkle in her eyes- he’d given her lilies on that spring afternoon in King’s Landing, when he asked her to come west with him as his wife.   
  
“Don’t go,” she whispers into his mouth, her nostrils filling with the sweet scent of the flowers and the musky aroma of Tywin’s skin. He says nothing, only presses his forehead to hers, his eyelashes swiping against her own.   
  
The air is still tonight, thick and warm and rich, with barely a breath of wind off the water. Her tears are warm in her eyes and Tywin’s body is warm over hers and the babe is warm and heavy in her womb- she’s nearly startled by the coolness of the solid object that Tywin places in her hand.   
  
It’s a stone, flat and smooth, molded by years of erosion into the crude shape of a heart. They’d found it on the beach during their first week at Casterly Rock as man and wife, nestled in the sand beside an identically-shaped rock. She keeps the latter under her pillow; she reaches for it now and presses it into Tywin’s palm.   
  
_He’ll have my heart, I’ll have his._  It’s a silly, sentimental notion, one that she’d be embarrassed to reveal to anyone else. But she need not feel ashamed with Tywin; he knows, he understands.   
  
He will depart early in the morning, but she implores him to share her chambers that night all the same. Their coupling is slow, luxuriant, dreamlike, couched in lily petals, the heart stones beside them on the plush mattress.   
  
When Joanna reaches her peak, the child within her jumps and jostles, hard enough that Tywin can feel it against his abdomen. His eyes open wide with surprise, and when he releases a rare, beautiful burst of laughter, Joanna finally allows her tears to come.   
  
  
  
“How much longer will you carry?” Genna peers over the low table to stare pointedly at Joanna’s stomach.   
  
“Four moons,” the Lady of Casterly Rock replies, knitting her brows together when her goodsister gives a gasp of surprise.   
  
“Gods, Joanna, you’re already about to topple over with that belly of yours. It must be enormous, what you’ve got in there. And you’re such a little thing- pushing it out will tear you in half.”   
  
Joanna frowns in the other woman’s direction, but Genna’s attention already drifts elsewhere. An envoy from Lannisport enters with a report on the latest trade shipments- a handsome young man with bronze-colored hair. As he hands the parchments to Lady Joanna, Genna catches his eye and gives him a brilliant smile and a wink. Tywin’s sister is a striking lass, tall and curvaceous, a girl and a half in all directions- the poor boy blushes bright crimson before rushing out with a bow, and the young Lady Frey giggles merrily.   
  
“Don’t you have councillors to do that for you?” Genna asks, nodding to the parchments spread on the table before Joanna.   
  
“I like to do it,” she replies. And it’s true; the Lannisport business holds Joanna’s attention more than anything else. Genna and her siblings had little to do with Lannisport for most of their lives, but Joanna’s family- less wealthy, less esteemed, mere cadets to the “main” family- interacted with the Lannisport Lannisters quite often. She remembers countless afternoons playing on the docks with Stafford while her father chatted with the trade captains, sometimes sneaking into the hulls of the ships to swipe packets of spices and spools of silk thread. Even now, as she sits in the high seat at Casterly Rock, she feels an undeniable kinship with this aspect of the Westerlands, and it’s a perspective that makes her feel valuable and useful. And above all else, Joanna Lannister loves to feel useful.   
  
She finishes with the paperwork in the late afternoon, as the sun begins to dip down toward the western horizon. The babe kicks up a storm, and her ankles swell so badly that she doubts she’ll be able to stand without assistance. She calls for the lute that Stafford brought her from their father’s house a week earlier; she’s had several lutes made since leaving her childhood home, but none suit her fingers quite so well as the one she’d inherited from her mother. She plucks out a few simple tunes to entertain her ladies, attempting to play each of their requests (Genna asks for a rendition of “The Rains of Castamere”, and she laughs as Joanna’s fingers stumble over the complicated chords). But she tires more quickly than usual, and she soon has to set the instrument aside.   
  
Petitioners come to the Rock that evening- smallfolk, for the most part, merchants and miners and sailors. They treat her with surprising respect and reverence; Stafford joked once that her swollen belly adds a certain gravity to her presence. “You’re the Mother come to life,” he chuckled. “It’s all they can do to stop themselves from falling to their knees and worshipping at your feet.”   
  
Said feet ache now with a throbbing, excruciating pain. She can barely keep the grimace off her face as she listens to the grievances of a local ironworker who mislikes the cheaper imported iron goods that came on the latest trade ship. The man brings his family along with him; a thin, sour-faced wife, a pair of scrawny little boys, and a gangly girl of twelve or thirteen. After Joanna assures him that she will address the problem, he guides his family to the exit, but the girl breaks away long enough to dart to Joanna’s dais, nervously extending a small parcel to the Lady of Casterly Rock.   
  
“For you, my lady,” she stammers in a near whisper. Joanna unties the string and peels back the paper to reveal a baby bonnet. The wool is simply-dyed and cheaper than what she would have chosen for herself, but the craftsmanship is very good. Although she knows that Tywin would disapprove of such familiarity, she brushes her fingers over the girl’s brow and offers her a radiant smile.   
  
“Thank you, child.”  _The Mother come to life_ , she thinks as she watches the girl blush from top to bottom before curtsying and scampering off after her family. And in spite of the fatigue that sinks into her flesh, in spite of the soreness and the jostling of her stomach and the long line of petitioners still to come, Joanna can’t help but feel quite satisfied.   
  
  
  
She screams herself awake, drenched in a cold sweat. Joanna stares up at the ceiling and waits for her breathing to slow, afraid to close her eyes again lest the images from her dream linger behind her eyelids. Her heart knocks against her ribcage, thumping loud enough to make her head ache, and she clasps her hands over her stomach-  _breathe in, breathe out._   
  
In her nightmare, she walked through a wood, thicker and leafier than any in the Westerlands. A mewling sound caught her attention, and she followed it to an enormous willow, its branches drooping under the weight of its tears.   
  
She pushed the vines out of the way and beheld a pair of baby ducks huddled in the moss. They were skinny, scrawny, pathetic-looking things, desperately vulnerable and exposed. They flapped their useless little wings, chirping and shaking, and her heart wept for them. She fell to her knees and reached her hands out, intending to take them in her lap and shield them from the cold.   
  
But then another pair of hands appeared, attached to no human body, but seeming to spring from the trunk of the willow. And she knew them- large and long-fingered and strong, hands to holds, hands to vanish between her legs until she cries out with pleasure, hands to drape garlands of flowers around her and press heart stones into her palm...   
  
Tywin’s hands reached for the ducklings, and Joanna breathed a sigh of relief. But then they closed into fists over the ducks’ tiny bodies, squeezing without mercy as the babies spasmed and cried- Joanna screamed, tried to reach for them, but the air held her in place. And then the flapping feathers stopped; the ducklings shuddered and fell silent.   
  
The dream seems to have disturbed the babe as well; it rolls and bumps in her womb until she reels with nausea. But she knows how to calm it; she reaches for the dish on her bedside table and pops a slice of nectarine in her mouth, greedily sucking the sweet juice from the fruit.   
  
“You like that, don’t you?” she whispers to her belly before pressing a sachet to her nose- she’d filled the cheesecloth with the dried petals of the lilies that Tywin had brought her before he left, and their fragrance never fails to calm her.   
  
“Just a silly dream,” she tells her stomach, dropping her head back onto the cushions. As she closes her eyes, she slips her hand under the pillow and traces her fingers over the smooth, cool edges of Tywin’s stone.   
  
_Just a silly dream._   
  
  
  
As the ninth moon of her pregnancy turns, the maester orders Joanna into bedrest. Objectively, she can understand why; her feet swell so badly that her shoes no longer fit, her belly hangs heavily enough that her spine begins to curve, and she can no longer walk from one end of the castle to the other without becoming too tired to turn and walk back. And yet she hates the forced stillness, hates to send Kevan to the Hall to deal with petitioners, hates lying about like an invalid while Genna flits about the castle, preparing it for Tywin’s imminent arrival.  _I should be the one to ready my house for my husband_ , she thinks with more than a little bitterness. But she cannot be cross with her kinfolk, not when they try so hard to keep her in good spirits. Between Stafford and Tygett and merry, spindly little Gerion (twelve years old and all limbs, like a cheerful golden-headed spider), she rarely wants for company.   
  
Her nights are long and restless (and, blessedly, largely dreamless). She sucks her nectarine juice and sniffs her lily sachet and grips the heart stone tight under her pillow, counting the days, the hours, the minutes...   
  
At last, Tywin runs through her door, hair disheveled and face flushed, his voice quiet and urgent as he orders everyone out of Joanna’s chamber. In spite of the ache in her back, she sits bolt upright before extending her cupped hands to him; the heart stone rests in her palms.   
  
“I kept it safe,” she whispers, her heart in her eyes as she watches him take the rock and replace it with its fellow.   
  
“As did I.”   
  
When he takes her hands in his, she remembers the dream for one sickly, unpleasant moment. But then he touches and strokes and it’s everything she’s missed- she kisses him like a woman starving, not caring a whit whether she ever takes a breath again.   
  
(But then the child jostles in her stomach, and she breaks away to breathe..for the babe, she’ll have to breathe.)   
  
Tywin gives her a quizzical look when she pulls at the ties of his clothing, rubbing his palm over her enormous belly. “I doubt the maesters would think it wise, Joanna.”   
  
She cups his face in her hands, a smile on her lips as she says, “You are Lord Tywin of House Lannister, Warden of the West and Hand of the King. What do you care what some fool maester has to say?”   
  
His hands twist in her curls as he pulls her to him for a fervent kiss, and there are no more words between them.   
  
  
  
Her labor begins the next morning, and it lasts for hours, days, weeks, _years_ . She would scream, but it hurts too much to scream, hurts too much to move any unnecessary muscles. Consciousness comes and goes, colors flash before her eyes- red green gold white black. She hears voices, some familiar and others not, and she rips and tears, her body in shreds, thick red blood coating her legs. It would be so easy to fall away, to go to sleep and never wake...   
  
But then a high-pitched wail, and she returns to the room. The midwife holds a swaddled bundle- Joanna can barely make out a red, wizened face and a dusting of white-gold hair.   
  
“A daughter, my lady,” the woman says, and Joanna’s heart leaps with elation- she reaches out, wants to hold her baby, her precious baby girl-   
  
But then the burning returns, and she feels the wind knocked from her body.  _Oh Gods, I’m dying, I’ll die without ever holding my baby..._   
  
“There’s another, my lady, another babe inside you...keep pushing, push!”   
  
Too tired and pained to question, Joanna obeys the midwife. A red miasma dances in front of her eyes, and she reels-   
  
Another shriek, and her eyes snap open. She sees the midwife wrapping another shriveled pink figure in swaddling clothes. She squints against the light and nearly laughs when she catches sight of a tiny cock hanging between its legs.   
  
The women urge her to rest, but she’ll hear none of it, not until she holds her twins. The midwife carefully places one in each arm- and they’re so tiny, so delicate and soft and vulnerable, just like newly hatched duckli-   
  
A chill seizes her heart, and she squeezes the babes to her breast, so tight that the girl releases a loud peep of objection.   
  
“Ah, they’re hale little things, aren’t they? A perfect pair of lion cubs,” the midwife laughs.   
  
“Lion cubs,” Joanna repeats with a deep exhale.  _That’s right, they’re lions. The newest Lions of Lannister, strong and brave and beautiful..._   
  
Tywin enters moments later, and after he kisses his wife, smoothing back her sweat-dampened hair, he takes his children in his arms and carries them about the room, his smile as blinding and elusive as a total eclipse.   
  
Joanna lies back on her pillows- they still smell of lilies, in spite of the sharp scent of blood that hangs in the hair- and as she watches her golden husband with their golden children, she tries not to think of how much the babies’ wispy pale hair resembles downy feathers.

 


End file.
